Hey Peeps,
Just wanted to give a big thanks to those who came out to our CD Release show at Palace w/ Neighbor. The turn out was amazing. It was so much fun to play the new songs now that the album is out. I don't think we realized how difficult it can be to play songs that no one has a recording of over and over until you play those same songs once it's out. We had so much fun playing them! Enough about us because in case you haven't heard her music, Kacie Williams (Neighbour) killed it to open the show. You can check out her stuff at www.facebook.com/neighbourmusic. Her Catcher And The Rye EP is nothing short of spectacular. She has a new song coming out really soon called Home that has Madi Diaz on it which is siiiiick! I can't say enough about her stuff but next time we play together she definitely needs to play Traffic Jam. She has a really cool version of that James Taylor song which I believe will be available with a sick live video sometime fairly soon. We will be sure to rep it once it's out!
So wow... this last week was a blur. We had a ton of stuff going on getting the new album out so tonight Kate and I went and checked out John Martin Davis Band at Palace and it was nice to unwind and get to listen to someone else play some tunes for once. Him and his brother have some incredible pipes.
Before I forget though we've got some cool news for the next few things we've got coming up. Once upon a time we played in The Bteam, so we thought it would be awesome if we got to do a show with both Davis and Tyler from Bteam before Davis goes off on some awesome east coast adventures. So at the block party we will be 6 strong and I couldn't be more excited. We've got some cool and fun(ny) covers for you guys and I'm just excited to share the stage with great friends and awesome musicians. Also, if you haven't gotten a copy of the record, you really need to do it! We worked so hard on it. We are still at the MC Hammer "sell albums out of our trunks" stage so don't be shy to hit me up and I'll meet you to get a copy. That makes me wonder if we need to cover Hammer Time... Anyway, thanks for listening and thanks to all the people who bought the record and have shared all our stuff. We have so much to do and so much to learn but I'm excited to be promoting and playing instead of recording. With that being said, we are trying to schedule stuff through the rest of the year and hopefully do a little tour so if anybody needs a band for something or wants to help, hit me up!
I've got the eye of the Tiger,
Steven
Monday, July 21, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
The Finite End To A Long Journey (and the beginning of a new one)
Under the Neon Lights (#UTNL, preferably) is finally out. Many people have alluded to the length of time we spent making this album and by most estimates, they are probably not near long enough. Truth be told, we've spent the better parts of the last seven years making this album. In hindsight, I would NEVER EVER recommend spending that much time making a record to any artist I ever met. However, for me the process always had a clear beginning and ending. I was unable to see anything in between and besides the many people who doubted we would ever release these songs, i always knew that the project had a finish line on the horizon but we were just never all that close to it. That didn't really worry me because I knew I had so much growth as a person and a musician to do regardless of whether it was public and honestly I was having a ton of fun experimenting with different ideas and styles and in some ways, it's bitter sweet that the album is out because I don't get to mess with it anymore. There are parts on the album that make my skin crawl because I want one last chance to tweak them. One more pass to change an EQ or Hi Hat level or one more take at a vocal but we had to release the album because just like evaluating limits in mathematics, as the tweaks get closer and closer together, the final change hits a brick wall that's unnoticeable. It's easy to see the difference between 1.5 and 2 but 1.95 and 2 are closer and 1.99 and 2 are virtually the same. You get my point, because I'm not saying our album is perfect, I'm saying within the boundaries of what I know how to do, I hit my limits, changes weren't making it better, or all that noticeably different. That's how you know you are finished.
First things first though, I love making recordings. That was this project's downfall from the beginning. I have many ideas and philosophies when it comes to how a record should and can sound but most of those are based on deciding on a production style that focuses on bringing the songs to life as best as they can. Our record was never going to be a raw, this is what we sound like live record, because it doesn't fit the songs but also because I love using studio techniques to add things to the songs that allow you to hear the full vision in my head when I'm writing it. Rarely do I imagine anything less than a "million" BGV's on a song. I grew up listening to cheesy vocal music, SUE ME. Unfortunately it's impossible for us to hire a million background vocalists for our excursions into playing live music. If it was, I would totally do it and someday I probably will try. That layering didn't just end with vocals though because between Matt and I there was always the temptation to lay down one more guitar part and we always did (but fortunately for you guys in mixing, a lot of them were deleted). I can't help but feel that if making a recording was just out to be a document of what a group of musicians sounds like in a room together, we would have been robbed of songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and all of its vocal glory. We would never have had the integration of drum machines into major recordings which would have robbed us of the lyrical creativity of guys like Eminem. We definitely wouldn't have heard the first Linkin Park record. The fact is, technology and music are so closely integrated that it's impossible to see where one begins and the other ends. There are artists out there who are making a ton of money selling a label of "raw" and "real" but they are just varying degrees of edits and reverb from revealing the honest fact, that the only recordings these days that we hear that are raw are the terrible local acts that you hear for two seconds and click off their page. Everything else is just better equipment and editors until you get to the top of the pile of awesome fake sounding music that we all partake in daily.
With that being said though, Casual listeners will never fully understand that within all those edits and track renders are tons of decisions that real human beings have to make in an effort to make a recording sound as best as they can within the resources they have. A computer doesn't automatically spit out a cool recording. Hundreds of hours of contemplation, listening, arguing, rocking out in the studio to temp tracks, bad vocal takes and retuning guitars 50,000 times are what determine how a recording sounds like it does. We were never lucky enough to get in with a producer that could be the driving force behind our album. Although we sent off demos to every producer I could think of and never even got a response back from one of them. I guess that was just the way this record would have to be. Honestly, I'm glad that we had to do it ourselves because it taught me the most important lesson a musician should ever learn.
MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY FIRST AND FOREMOST.
I know this lesson applies to all aspects of life but when you are a musician it becomes incredibly magnified. Inevitably you will have friends who also do music and guess what? Poll a room of musicians (and non-musicians for that matter) and they will all have a different idea of who is making the best music, what that music should sound like and how you should be promoting yourself. There is a reason why music is so hard and that's because it's totally subjective. One man's trash is another man's treasure and you just keep trying until more people are convinced you are treasure (although to be honest the more people who hate your music the better because they are the cheapest and loudest free advertising you can get).
So anyway, for anyone who gets this far in the post, thanks for listening. I am thinking about doing a series of blog posts where I talk about the making of a few of the songs from the record if people are interested in reading about it then let me know in the comments. And by the way, it doesn't say it on iTunes (we are bugging them hourly until it happens) but we got the album mastered in all it's 24 bit glory which is what the MFit or mastered for iTunes logo is all about. It's goal is to make the itunes version sound as good as humanly possible. So if you don't mind measly 16 bit dynamic range, then buy a CD from us. Alicia Cartrite killed it on the artwork so I would hate for you to not see her awesome work, BUT if you have a recording studio lying around where you just have to have that 24 bit goodness and you swear that your subs just don't react the same way to 16 bit wav's, then buy the album on iTunes.
Either way, we have tons of stuff in the works right now but be sure to come see us Friday night at Palace in Canyon with Neighbour at 8 o clock. We are celebrating the release of the record and the free time that has come along with being done with the only project I've been working on my entire adult life. If that's not something worth celebrating I don't know what is.
- Steven
First things first though, I love making recordings. That was this project's downfall from the beginning. I have many ideas and philosophies when it comes to how a record should and can sound but most of those are based on deciding on a production style that focuses on bringing the songs to life as best as they can. Our record was never going to be a raw, this is what we sound like live record, because it doesn't fit the songs but also because I love using studio techniques to add things to the songs that allow you to hear the full vision in my head when I'm writing it. Rarely do I imagine anything less than a "million" BGV's on a song. I grew up listening to cheesy vocal music, SUE ME. Unfortunately it's impossible for us to hire a million background vocalists for our excursions into playing live music. If it was, I would totally do it and someday I probably will try. That layering didn't just end with vocals though because between Matt and I there was always the temptation to lay down one more guitar part and we always did (but fortunately for you guys in mixing, a lot of them were deleted). I can't help but feel that if making a recording was just out to be a document of what a group of musicians sounds like in a room together, we would have been robbed of songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and all of its vocal glory. We would never have had the integration of drum machines into major recordings which would have robbed us of the lyrical creativity of guys like Eminem. We definitely wouldn't have heard the first Linkin Park record. The fact is, technology and music are so closely integrated that it's impossible to see where one begins and the other ends. There are artists out there who are making a ton of money selling a label of "raw" and "real" but they are just varying degrees of edits and reverb from revealing the honest fact, that the only recordings these days that we hear that are raw are the terrible local acts that you hear for two seconds and click off their page. Everything else is just better equipment and editors until you get to the top of the pile of awesome fake sounding music that we all partake in daily.
With that being said though, Casual listeners will never fully understand that within all those edits and track renders are tons of decisions that real human beings have to make in an effort to make a recording sound as best as they can within the resources they have. A computer doesn't automatically spit out a cool recording. Hundreds of hours of contemplation, listening, arguing, rocking out in the studio to temp tracks, bad vocal takes and retuning guitars 50,000 times are what determine how a recording sounds like it does. We were never lucky enough to get in with a producer that could be the driving force behind our album. Although we sent off demos to every producer I could think of and never even got a response back from one of them. I guess that was just the way this record would have to be. Honestly, I'm glad that we had to do it ourselves because it taught me the most important lesson a musician should ever learn.
MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY FIRST AND FOREMOST.
I know this lesson applies to all aspects of life but when you are a musician it becomes incredibly magnified. Inevitably you will have friends who also do music and guess what? Poll a room of musicians (and non-musicians for that matter) and they will all have a different idea of who is making the best music, what that music should sound like and how you should be promoting yourself. There is a reason why music is so hard and that's because it's totally subjective. One man's trash is another man's treasure and you just keep trying until more people are convinced you are treasure (although to be honest the more people who hate your music the better because they are the cheapest and loudest free advertising you can get).
So anyway, for anyone who gets this far in the post, thanks for listening. I am thinking about doing a series of blog posts where I talk about the making of a few of the songs from the record if people are interested in reading about it then let me know in the comments. And by the way, it doesn't say it on iTunes (we are bugging them hourly until it happens) but we got the album mastered in all it's 24 bit glory which is what the MFit or mastered for iTunes logo is all about. It's goal is to make the itunes version sound as good as humanly possible. So if you don't mind measly 16 bit dynamic range, then buy a CD from us. Alicia Cartrite killed it on the artwork so I would hate for you to not see her awesome work, BUT if you have a recording studio lying around where you just have to have that 24 bit goodness and you swear that your subs just don't react the same way to 16 bit wav's, then buy the album on iTunes.
Either way, we have tons of stuff in the works right now but be sure to come see us Friday night at Palace in Canyon with Neighbour at 8 o clock. We are celebrating the release of the record and the free time that has come along with being done with the only project I've been working on my entire adult life. If that's not something worth celebrating I don't know what is.
- Steven
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